Ethnic Groups in Central America - Garifuna People & Others

Garifuna People & Others

Garifuna is an Arawakan language spoken in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua by the Garifuna people. Their language is primarily derived from Arawak and Carib, with English, French and Spanish to a lesser degree. One interesting feature of Garifuna is a vocabulary split between terms used only by men and terms used only by women. This does not however affect the entire vocabulary but when it does, the terms used by men generally come from Carib and those used by women come from Arawak.

Almost all Garifuna are bilingual or polylingual, speaking the official languages of the countries they inhabit such as Spanish, Kriol and English most commonly as a first language. According to one genetic study their ancestry is on average is 76% Sub Saharan African, 20% Arawak/Carib and 4% European.

Country or
territory with flag
% Local Population % Regional
Guatemala ! Guatemala 0.1
Belize ! Belize 15.8
El Salvador ! El Salvador 0
Honduras ! Honduras 3
Nicaragua ! Nicaragua 0
Costa Rica ! Costa Rica 0
Panama ! Panama 0
Total 70064548488000000004,548,488 700110800000000000010.80

Read more about this topic:  Ethnic Groups In Central America

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